One Part Woman Notes

Common Themes
●​ Positionality of the authors
●​ Important role of family and community in the perception of love and marriage by the
individual individualistic
●​ How they challenge it
●​ Woman’s agency
●​ Nature, agricultural metaphors
●​ caste

About the Author

https://caravanmagazine.in/reviews-essays/boats-against-current#

●​ Perumal Murugan was born in 1966 to a family of farmers who had small land
holdings near Thiruchengodu, a town in Namakkal district, Tamil Nadu. His father,
a farmer, supplemented the family's income by running a soda shop in a cinema
theatre in Thiruchengode
●​ A Tamil professor for over two decades (PhD Tamil Studies) → offers an excellent
critique of the contemporary Tamil society
●​ Contributions to research and academic study of Tamil literature specific to the
Kongunadu region, including building a lexicon of words, idioms and phrases special
to Kongunadu
●​ Extensively researched and documented Kongu folklore, especially the ballads on
Annamar Sami, a pair of folk deities
●​ “Cultural map of the Kongu region”
●​ Murugan is a humane chronicler of life in northern Kongunadu, especially the area
around Namakkal, the region he hails from

Overview
●​ The book is a result of his sincere investment into researching the indigenous Tamil
language, folklore, folk deities, and several Tamil classic texts → He portrays the full
spectrum of the
●​ Madhorubagan in Tamil, referring to Lord Shiva’s andrgenous form, translated by
Aniruddhan Vasudevan who won the Sahitya Akademi Award for it
Plot
●​ The novel is set during the colonial era of TN. It is a saga of a married couple of two
passionate lovers, Kali and Ponna, who fall prey to the societal pressure of begetting a
child of their own. They try several prayers and offerings but to no avail. Kali is often
encouraged to have a second wife, an idea he considers but ultimately rejects. As a last
resort, their families put forward the suggestion that Ponnu go to the chariot festival of
the androgynous god Ardhanarishvara, where on the 14th day, societal taboo relating to
extramarital sex is relaxed and consenting men and women may sleep together. Kali is
repulsed by the idea but brings up the subject with Ponna, who responds by saying she
would go if he wished so. Kali feels betrayed by her reaction and eventually grows colder
toward her. The following year, Ponna's family takes matters into their own hands by
luring Kali out of the house, while convincing her that he has given his consent for her to
go to the festival. She does so and finds a man she considers "a god" to impregnate her.
Meanwhile, Kali returns home to find Ponna gone, leading him to break down and curse
Ponnu.
●​ Two scandalizing aspects according to the conservative worldview:
○​ A woman's sexual autonomy is highlighted, where she can choose anyone across
the caste-class spectrum as her one-night sex partner outside the sanctity of
marriage, and an alternative extra-marital eroticism is hinted at
○​ The venture is shown to be suggested by the community members themselves,
and hence is shown as something legitimate and celebratory

Reception and Controversy

●​ Source of controversy is mostly the depiction of this festival among people living around
Tiruchengode. Murugan has said in interviews that there is no documented information
about it but the details were passed on through oral traditions.
●​ Conservative religious and caste Hindu groups held massive protests against the novel on
the grounds that it hurt their religio-cultural sentiments, misrepresented the Hindu
scriptures and insulted their deities, women, and community as a whole
●​ A smear campaign was launched and mobilized against the author, coordinated by
members of the RSS.
●​ In Romila Thapar in a Hindu article
(https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/the-real-reasons-for-hurt-sentiments/
article6988107.ece)
○​ Was this perhaps a kinder way of resolving childlessness in the days gone by?
Consensual sex with a stranger for purposes of conception on a particular
religious occasion would not have been considered adultery but accepted as a
sanctioned religious custom. People today do not recognise the fact that in past
times, customary law that was outside the social code of brahmanical law was
 regarded as quite legitimate, as long as it had the sanction of the community,
and this sanction is made explicit in the novel.
○​ But to write about an activity that was current in the past is not an endorsement of
what is today, contrary to contemporary law. Nor is it in any way a slur on
religion, since it is an activity that is regarded as legitimate by the community, as
the novel makes clear. So who gets to represent the community? Whose voice
is heard?
●​ Murugan’s reaction
○​ 2010, Murugan was threatened by conservatives from his own caste in Namakkal
where he lived
○​ The hate campaign against Murugan caused him immense public humiliation, and
demoralized and overwhelmed him into subjugation -> exile to Chennai
○​ In 2015, he was forced to sign an unconditional apology and to withdraw unsold
copies of his book. Because even though he had big media support, the reality was
that him and his wife were based out of Namakkal and did not have the town’s
support, shifted to Chennai as a form of exile - self-censorship
○​ Declared his writer self is no more → A self-written virtual obituary he posted on
his social media wall.
○​ Murugan's silencing is seen as a part of a larger trend of censorship in India under
the current political climate
○​ Murugan wrote a virtual obituary of his own death on his FB wall: "Perumal
Murugan, the writer is dead. As he is not god, he is not going to resurrect himself.
He also has no faith in rebirth. An ordinary teacher, he will live as P. Murugan.
Leave him alone."

Critical Analysis
Writing
●​ Murugan’s narratives include vivid descriptions of the landscape and terrain, the daily
labor of people in the fields and pasturelands, houses and barnyards, and the nuances and
crudities of social relations in a casteist society
●​ He attempts to explore human predicament with sympathy through focusing on the
individual, while situating them concretely in the social and natural world → Rather than
situating them in isolation, he makes his protagonists intelligible by weaving them into a
vividly woven narrative of the larger world. Eg: description of Ponna in the festival,
maybe put excerpts

Genre of “Rooted Literature”

●​ What Murugan was producing was locally grown, not a canned object sold on a
supermarket bookshelf. It is rare to come across a writer who enjoys such intimacy with
 not just the land but also the customs that govern the lives of the people who live on it.
Culture, as a particular mix of religion, superstition, and the calculations of power, and
with caste as a crucial determinant, is central to the story that Murugan is telling. The
book is so rooted in the soil of tradition that its rebellion against it is all the more
unexpected and moving.
(https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-perumal-murugan-was-resurrected-t
hrough-writing)
●​ The description of Ponna's transformation as she is left alone in the festival crowd, free to
make a sexual choice for the first time in her life, is extraordinarily vivid

Themes
●​ Complex lived realities with intersections of caste, class, gender, hetero-patriarchal feudal
family structures, and resistance to all of it
●​ Pervasiveness of the stigma faced by Kali an​
​
​
d Ponna is a central thread of the narrative.
●​ Explores relations with land/property, animals (Kali’s barnyard) and Gods

Ritual and Tradition

●​ Role of deities in their lives is very important - Kali’s mother tells him that his family is
cursed by Pavatha, a ferocious female deity in the jungle, for a past crime against a young
girl, and that the males in his family are doomed to remain childless; if a child is born to
them, it will be short-lived.
●​ So they engage in lots of offerings and worship, including walking around ‘varadikkal’ or
the stone of the barren. The infertile woman is supposed to go round it thrice and it is
fraught with danger because the walkway or the ledge is just one-foot wide and a misstep
will landher headlong onto the rocks below.

Marriage
●​ Gender roles within ?
●​ The absence of a child in the couple's life is hurtful, but their mutual love and affection
outweighs the grief of such deprivation → At each instance of disappointment and on
every occasion of cruelty inflicted on them by the community, Kali and Ponna stand by
each other and re-affirm the mutual bond of love and understanding between them
●​ Childlessness is seen as a sort of calamity
 ●​ "A full-fledged psychological portrait of a marriage under pressure, beset by traditional
practices and outdated societal attitudes that contrive to destroy the union of a loving
couple."

‘Women’ and Gender

●​ Gender essentialism is explored
○​ Critique of the patriarchal conspiracy to reduce women to their uterine space and
discipline their bodies
○​ Though both of them face taunts w/r childlessness, it affects Ponna more and she
takes it more personally
●​ The ritualistic tradition of the temple chariot festival could be read as a feminist moment
within the novel that shows how indigenous prototypes of resistance from within a given
community to its otherwise strictly hetero-patriarchal, casteist, and feudal societal
structure can be imagined. It is these non-conformist moments within the text that caused
such discomfort to a section of the public that turned into an over-jealous mob that sought
to operate as self-styled censors
●​ Socially accepted for Kali to remarry even though the source of infertility is unknown
●​ In two possible sequels to the novel, Ponna returns pregnant → In one, Kali commits
suicide, and in another, he develops deep rage and resentment for Ponna → Both ends
ensure Ponna’s suffering for the apparent ‘crime’ which at least partially threatened to
subvert the hetero-patriarchal construction of the institution called “marriage” that is
based on the idea of monogamy and absolute female submission of her agency – bodily
and otherwise
●​ The solution suggested could be a slur on the husband, for if the wife conceives with a
stranger, then it reflects on the impotency of the husband. This is unacceptable in a male
chauvinist society where the woman is always at fault. In a highly patriarchal society
such as our present-day society, such a slur would be unacceptable. Ultimately the
woman takes an independent decision in this action, as the husband’s consent remains
somewhat ambiguous until the very end. Is all this seen as contrary to patriarchy? - is it
about religion or patriarchy, patriarchy but using religion because that garners more
attention present-day?
●​ Sexual autonomy and freedom (insert excerpt from festival)

Caste
●​ Critiques the deeply entrenched caste system vis-à-vis a compartmentalized
hetero-patriarchal socio-cultural feudal fabric of India
●​ Importance of land and lineage
○​ The land in and around Tiruchengode,which is the location of the novel, was once
a rocky, difficult terrain covered with rugged forests. The Gounders are the
dominant caste who, through sheer hard work, cleared the land and made itarable.
 Paddy, millet, corn and coconut grow there only after a great deal of effort has
gone into the cultivation of them. If the landowners are Gounders, the castes
which subsist on them are the Chakkilis and Sanars, the latter doing the job of
toddy and palm-tapping.
○​ For this agrarian community, land and property is of utmost importance, it is a
way of life. The male lineage becomes important because they are an essential
link to the continuation of property ownership and caste-based vocations,
essential for maintaining social equilibrium -> childlessness is stigmatised
○​ Kongu Vellalar Gounder caste to which Kali and Ponna belong, the status of the
landowner is directly proportional to the number of sons he has.
○​ Ponna is pressured to conceive to improve her husband's social standing and to
stop people from bringing up the lack of inheritance for her family's property.
Thus, a major portion of the couple's woes come not from their own desire to
have a child, but their community's stigmatization towards those who do not have
any
●​ Part of Kali's distress over Ponna attending the festival stems from the thought that his
wife might have intercourse with an untouchable
○​ More than half the young men roaming about the town are from the ‘untouchable’
castes. If any of them gets to be with Ponna, I simply cannot touch her after that. I
cannot even lift and hold that child. (140)
●​ Parallel line with that other couple who have too many children but not enough money or
something -> Kali thinks of adopting one of their children but drops the thought
immediately as Ponna and the rest of the family members wouldn’t be happy as the child
is born out of a lower caste

Critical Appreciation

Death of an Author: Dissecting the notion of religious hurt sentiment vis-à-vis

literary-political censorship in India through One Part Woman - Nasima
Islam

‘Myth and Reality’ - Kalyan Raman